Earth Day 2017 took on greater meaning than ever before. Since Trump took office his administration has systematically undermined and dismissed scientific facts such as global warming as liberal hysteria.

In a mere 100 days he and Congress have implemented unprecedented easing of environmental protections beginning with the Orwellian act of excising all mention of climate change from the White House website. This draconian editing process was followed by the appointment of the fossil fuel shill, Scott Pruitt, to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

Pruitt, outspoken in his opposition to the very values that the agency upholds, has stated that “carbon dioxide is not a primary contributor to climate change.” He sued the EPA for supporting President Obama’s Clean Power Act – an important piece of legislation that for the first time set Federal limits on carbon pollution. Pruitt is a man who Trump praises highly, stating that his new head of the EPA “will reverse an out-of-control anti-energy agenda.”

Appointing Scott Pruitt to head the EPA is akin to placing someone who believes that the earth is the center of the universe to head NASA. We will not let the current GOP lead our nation down a perilous path with their “Roadmap to Repeal” (An actual document compiled by The Freedom Partners – a group of wealthy political donors organized by the Koch brothers).

Scientists are accustomed to thinking of things in terms of hundreds of thousands of years (or light years). But, as seen by the massive worldwide turn out for the Science March on Earth Day, the boundary between politics and science is now an illusion.

When Trump repeals environmental safeguards such as the Clean Water Act, which protected the fragile eco-system of our streams and rivers from becoming dumping grounds for toxic waste, and when agencies such as NOAA (National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration) are being treated dismissively as extraneous, scientists have been forced to become activists.

Trump’s careless tweets, his mendacity, his toying with the grave issues of global warming and nuclear war, reveal the vulnerability of our dreams for our children and the world they will inherit. Dreams that are worth fighting for – that have always been worth fighting for…a world that is cleaner, safer, more compassionate, with liberty and justice for all.

Gather your friends and family and lace up your boots. We have seen in the last 100 days that our voices are powerful. We are all connected, just as all waterways are connected as they flow to the sea. Hear the call to action. There is no time to lose.

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“What used to be a wish list of the oil, coal, and gas industries has become the to do list for Congress and the White House.”

“Bless the beasts and singing birds and guard with tenderness small things that have no words.” Anonymous

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As a baby girl grows, she not only listens to her inner voice to determine who she is, but to all the voices with which her culture speaks to her. It is critical that those who love her help her to believe that she is strong, smart, and valued for her unique and singular identity.

I cannot imagine, when so many women around the world are fighting and dying for their rights, the right to control their own bodies, the right to be educated, the right to be treated with the same respect as the men in their society, and the right not to live in subordinate fear, why anyone would think it was cute to dress a baby girl up in faux high heels. Putting an infant in this ridiculous outfit is objectification at its lowest form, because it is perpetuated on an innocent before she has any cognitive association to the meaning, uses, and symbolism of the product.

A parent’s eyes are the child’s first mirror. When parents encourage their little girls to conform to stereotypes they help create at deep emotional and intellectual levels feelings that lower self-expectations and self-esteem. In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir postulates that “sooner or later women will arrive at complete economic and social equality, which will bring about an inner metamorphosis.” It is respect for this fragile inner metamorphosis that is necessary in order to achieve independent, self-assured, and confident young girls.

No discussion about creating this kind of societal psychological shift is complete without mention of the stereotyping of boys. One does not exist without the other. It is just as harmful to tell a little boy that he is allowed to get angry and fight back, but it is not “manly” to cry, as it is to condone a little girl’s tears while telling her that girls don’t fight.

From Disney to Darkest Dungeons traditional gender stereotypes are constantly perpetuated in the media and in the marketing of “girl” and” boy” products.

These roles, seen over and over as the child grows, normalize character traits based on gender and project unrealistic goals, from female body image to macho posturing. When someone speaks for us, we lose our voice. Boys are in danger of becoming emotionally isolated and girls lost in the never satiated need for approval.

How does a parent fight this cultural vortex and its strong emotional, social, and economic current? Believing in gender equality is all very well and good but we need to act on our beliefs in a conscious way. The most important way we teach our children is through modeling behaviors. Reject stereotypes as they arise and talk about it with your children. You will be surprised at how aware they are. Even two and three year olds will tell you that fuchsia is a girl color. Don’t just accept that. You don’t have to force your little boy to buy a fuchsia backpack, but you can ask your child why he thinks fuchsia is only for girls and point out all the amazing fuchsia colors in nature explaining that a color is just a color. Gently plant the seed and trust in your child’s innocent clarity. It is we that muddy this clarity with our pinks and blues.

Stereotyping is a kind of prejudice that leads to sexism in our personal and public lives. We are male and female, of course, and that is a wondrous thing. But, first, we are human beings born with a keen desire for pride and dignity and an innate need to dream and explore without limits.

Conservative estimates are that 10,000 children have died from the Syrian War. Art therapy programs have helped to heal the survivors who have wounds that can’t be seen.

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“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

Ray Bradbury

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Last week Trump released his budget proposal in which federal funding for the renowned Corporation for Public Broadcasting is cut to zero and the highly respected Institutions of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities are eliminated completely. If Congress concurs, this will be the first time in American history that a president has pulled the federal arts program from the people.

In support of these cuts, Trump’s administration has stated, “ Can we really continue to ask a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for these programs? The answer is no. We can ask them to pay for defense, and we will. But we can’t ask them to continue to pay for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.”

CPB, NEA, and NEH combined cost the average citizen about $1.35 per year

Our country deserves better and our citizens deserve more respect. Trump clearly disregards the intelligence of those who struggle and the dreams they have for their children’s future by dismissing such illuminating shows as Sesame Street, Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, Masterpiece Theater, American Masters, Independent Lens, Live From Lincoln Center, Front Line, PBS News Hour, Ken Burns, NATURE, Bill Moyers, NOVA, PBS Kids and PBS America as unnecessary excesses produced by and for the elite.

Particularly in a country in which preschool is not available to all, and many local libraries have been shut down because of the cost of maintaining them, public television and radio are some of the only free inlets of unbiased information, objective journalism, and commercial free educational programing. It is no surprise then, that the same president who “loves the poorly educated” and considers journalists “the enemy” would not believe in funding universal access to knowledge. Public Broadcasting may be the only window on the world that impoverished children are exposed to. Ask yourself why looking through that window is not something that our current president wants them to do.

Art, in all its forms, is an expression of our shared humanity. We still gaze in wonder at ancient works, identifying with the emotions and thoughts of people that lived centuries ago. Art, then, connects us, not only as a viable expression of modern culture, but across the ages and around the world. It encourages us to think, to feel, to see other points of view, to be exposed to the lessons of history, and to learn about other cultures. Art tears down walls and builds bridges. It seeks out the truth and it helps us heal. It is for all of us, from the preschooler’s first self portrait to Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Trump’s plan clearly reveals his vision of a dystopian future in which the arts not only hold no value, but are dismissed as irrelevant. Universal access to the arts and support of artists is a sacrosanct principle that we cannot let slip away.

One of my personal heroes, Fred Rogers, makes a plea for federal funding for children’s programming – May 1, 1969

If we care about mankind and its future, if we care that the most powerful nation on earth has a leader who does not believe in science and who puts immediate gratification above concern for future generations, then it is time that we make a radical shift in how we view education within a global society. The mill of school grinds along, and we are glad that it does, but changes in how we teach at the fundamental level have now become critically important.

“Most of what we teach children today is going to be completely irrelevant to the job market in 2040 or 2050.”

Yuval Noah Harari – Sapiens

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We cannot survive, much less thrive, if we build walls and keep people out. It is through the permeable sharing of ideas and cultural nuances that we build on our own reservoirs of knowledge, compassion, and the ability to live in harmony.

No one would dispute that teaching our children to share is a good thing, one of the basic elements of social-emotional relationships. When we share, we learn. We show others our good intentions, and they show us theirs. Bridges are built and alliances are formed.

The concept of respecting one another begins at the earliest levels of education. Even preschoolers can understand that their blue marble of a world spins in a beautifully complex solar system. They can grasp the idea that there are lands across the seas where people speak differently and go about their day in different ways, yet share the same joys and sorrows that we do.

We cannot coexist in any kind of peace if we fear each other, and we cannot imagine anything better if we don’t begin to encourage critical thinking skills and the uses of imagination in our schools.

Children feel a close affinity with the creatures of air, sea, mountains, and forests that share the world with us. Have you, lately, looked at a picture book of animals as closely as they do? They have an innate curiosity and empathy that, rather than dismissing as ingenuous, we need to recognize for the wisdom that it holds.

The question “Why?” is asked primarily by children less than seven years old and the greatest philosophers and scientists of all time. Think about that.

Yet we proceed, beginning in elementary school, to encourage students not to ask, but to answer questions- to memorize facts, figures, and formulas. It is no wonder, then, that the trajectory of education becomes a long distance race to get into a good college, secure a high paying job, and then, finally, get down to the business of living.

The way our competitive education system works is that children learn early on that it is better not to think outside of the box. That imaginative thinking, flights of fancy, and creativity, at best lowers their grade point average and at worse, gets them labeled “weird.”

We are, grade by grade, inadvertently teaching our children not to think more deeply than a test requires.

Worldwide-scholars, tech companies, scientists, educators, politicians, medical researchers, and thousands of others share knowledge; effectively creating networks of ideas that often lead to radical breakthroughs in their fields. When we think and feel and work together at the global level, we nurture compassion for the hungry, the suffering, the refugees of war, all those in need, because the faces and the voices of humanity become real to us. We cannot understand others without interacting with them, any more than we can understand what water is just from knowing its chemical formula. When we foster bonds with different nations we all benefit. Our minds expand in many different ways as we share thoughts and our hearts grow in equal measure as we become more viscerally aware of others.

Without making a definitive change in both our education system and our budding nationalistic and isolationist politics we are in serious danger of losing our ability to engage innovatively and diplomatically. It is unwise, if not foolish, to be unaware that our entire planet is an eco-system, not only from the standpoint of biology, but on deeper levels of cognitive connectivity. We need clean air and water and we need to believe in and take responsibility forclimate change, but we must also believe in mutual respect and tolerance despite different skin colors, religions, or ideologies. It is vital that we begin to teach, starting at the earliest levels of education, that we are the caretakers of our world, not its rulers.

Read across American month began this week with celebrations all over the world of Dr. Seuss’ birthday. Dr. Seuss would be delightful to read even if his books were just pure fun. But, there is more than silliness under that tall striped hat.

In The Uses of Imagination, Bruno Bettelheim states that “The child intuitively comprehends that although fairy tales are unreal, they are not untrue.”

This is the nexus of the genius of Dr. Seuss – His ability to create whimsical characters with wild hair, gangly bodies, and furry feet that touch our heart with their humanity.

Dr. Seuss, born Theodore Seuss Geisel (1904), was an artist, an intellectual and a seeker of knowledge. His very first children’s book And To Think That I Saw It OnMulberry Street (rejected twenty seven times by publishers) encourages using one’s imagination as a way to see the world in many different ways. He poses the question: What is reality?

But Mulberry Street didn’t sell well and his career as a children’s author seemed doomed when Life Magazine published an article in 1954 that exposed America’s children’s poor reading abilities. John Hersey (author of A Separate Peace) was quoted in the article as saying that children were illiterate because the primers in school were so boring and that authors like Dr. Seuss should be writing them.

Shortly after, Theo was approached by a major publishing house and asked to create a primer using 220 vocabulary words. The result , The Cat in the Hat, made him a household name. Fame brought lucrative offers by corporations eager to exploit his popularity. The ever unconventional Geisel turned down every proposal. Even when he was wooed with an unprecedented amount of money just to use a short unpublished verse on a Christmas billboard, Theo, showing unusual moral fortitude, refused, stating that he did not want to be associated with products for sale.

Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!

What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store

What if Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit more!

And what happened then? Well…in Whoville they say,

That the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day!

How The Grinch Stole Christmas – Dr. Seuss

Throughout his career as a children’s author, Dr. Seuss emphasized the importance of integrity, caring, tenderness, courage, and the interconnectivity of all creatures.

He held his head high and he threw out his chest

And he looked at the hunters as much as to say

“Shoot if you must but I won’t run away.”

I meant what I said and I said what I meant…

An elephant’s faithful One Hundred percent!

Horton Hatches the Egg – Dr. Seuss

In The Sneetches he addresses the absurdity of prejudice, and in Oh! The PlacesYou’ll Go! he gives us, in classic Seussesque style, both warning and encouragement:

You’ll come to a place where the streets are not marked. Some windows are lighted. But mostly there darked.

But Dr. Seuss reaches a lofty zenith in his darkly beautiful and profoundly environmentally aware treatise The Lorax, who “speaks for the trees.” The author’s brilliance lies in his ability to show us a believable glimpse of a tree’s soul – albeit one with a small orange furry body and a ridiculously large yellow moustache.

Teach your children to be on the look out for them.

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“When I let go of what I am I become what I might be. When I let go of what I have, I receive what I need.” Tao Te Ching

Birds fell from the sky, fish floated dead in the sea and Tomoko floated in her mother’s womb when she was poisoned by the highly toxic chemical methylmercury released into the Minamata Bay by the Japanese Corporation, Chisso. The attempt at covering up the factory’s fouling of the waters went all the way up to The Ministry of International Trade and Industry and The Japan Chemical Industry Asociation.

The photojournalist Eugene Smith, in covering the story, was beaten so brutally by several factory workers hired by Chisso that he lost some sight in one eye, and never fully recovered. His heart breaking photograph of Tomoko and her mother helped bring worldwide awareness to the plight of victims of industrial waste pollution and helped save thousands of unborn children from short lives wracked with physical and mental deformities.

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My father was a journalist. He typed his stories on a Remington Typewriter, always making a carbon copy. He would often advise me, “Consider the source.” when I came home from school with fantastical stories. Historically, journalists have stood for the truth. Honor bound to get news that governments, corporations, or individuals do not want revealed, they often risk savage assaults, kidnapping, prison, or death.

As of late they have been at risk of another, more insidious, peril. Being labeled as “the enemy” by the President of the United States of America. Every authoritarian regime has silenced the press and taken over broadcasting, turning it into a vehicle for propaganda. It is a standard fascist maneuver.

Journalists have always worked hard to earn the right to write for an established and reputable news agency. Any falsehoods could jeopardize not only their job, but their reputation and entire career. Now, anyone with access to the internet can spread outlandish rumors with the push of a button. We are all familiar with these at best silly, and at worst grotesquely racist and sexist stories. From the never ending gossip about celebrities, to the deadly serious lies spewed from the alt-right press corps, people can choose what they wish to read from an exhaustive list of sources.

It is now more important than ever to “consider the source”. Journalists, such as those that work for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, NBC, CNN, and the BBC have all been harangued by our current president and his staff, while outlets such as Breitbart, Fox News, and The Gateway Pundit are lauded. http://tinyurl.com/jcvokve

We must ask ourselves why.

The most important move a dictatorship must make is to control the news. This is not easily done. One cannot storm into their offices in Manhattan and throw everyone out. Another tactic needs to be taken which makes force unnecessary, a tactic well understood by those closest to Trump. To stir up havoc and distrust, to demonize and belittle the press at every opportunity, and to create confusion about what is truth and what is not. Using words such as “rigged,” calling press members “the opposition party,” citing the phrase “fake news” frequently to discredit any coverage not agreeable to them. Each time Trump mentions The New York Times, arguably one of the greatest news outlets in the world, he tags them “the failing” New York Times. Why does he do that?

Hitler said, “If you tell a big enough lie often enough, it will be believed.”

The bullying manner toward the press that was bantered about during the Republican campaign for presidency served the current administration well. Emboldened, they do not worry about making snide and demeaning remarks about journalists. Stephen Bannon, White House chief strategist and member of Trump’s National Security Council stated recently that, “The press should keep its mouth shut.”

Our right to hear the truth and speak the truth without fear is fundamental to our freedom, and we cannot and will not accept anything less. We owe our children this noble legacy. Be aware, call and send emails to the White House: https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/write-or-call march, sign petitions – do whatever you can do to lift your singular voice. There is an encroaching shadow over our land that we must neither ignore nor fear. Hope is a courageous emotion. It is also one that increases incrementally when shared. So, be hopeful. Speak out. Resist. Fight for the freedom that has been so dearly earned over the generations.

“No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.”

Edward R. Murrow

Acclaimed journalist who faced up to McCarthyism

Over 1,200 journalists were killed in the last 25 years, less than half covering wars, the rest covering politics or corruption.